Subject:Thank you and Congratulations from The Fred Hollows Foundation

Hi Rob, Jill, Brian and Lauri,

Thank you so much for inviting The Fred Hollows Foundation for the launch today. I am proudly wearing the sticker still!

Gabi said to say a huge thanks – as you could tell, she had a lot of fun in her old stomping ground!

Congratulations once again in a wonderful and successful launch. We are very humbled and grateful to be a partner of Twice of Doctor and we look forward to working with you to make this even bigger and successful in the coming years.

I have spoken to the Comms team here– they will put this on Twitter today and Facebook in the coming days. I am more than happy to also include this in our future hard copy newsletters (distributed to nearly 300,000 Australians) or our website if you think this is appropriate.

Thank you all for making this happen. One of the first “Fred Hollows” quotes I heard was “When it comes to eye surgery, there should always be a patient, a surgeon and an apprentice” and it is one of the reasons why The Foundation is able to achieve such incredible results. We pride ourselves on not being an aid organisation, (Fred was strongly against the ”fly in, fly out” model) but one that provides ‘development’ with a strong sustainable model – training local medical and support staff.

As you have heard by now, 4 out of 5 people who are blind don’t need to be. The Foundation is working hard to end avoidable blindness. In 2014, The Foundation has made a commitment to train 26 eye surgeons, 29 eye health nurses and 2,780 community health workers in Kenya alone. Twice the Doctor’s support will go towards training these staff members so that people in Kenya have access to local skilled eye surgeons and are no longer going needlessly blind.

On behalf of Gabi and everyone at The Fred Hollows Foundation, thank you for keeping Fred’s vision alive.